REVIEW: 13 colorful pix of Funko’s San Diego Comic-Con Batman ’66 exclusive… — Check out the FUNKO BATMAN ’66 INDEX of stories and features. Click here! — Right off the bat, I gotta say it’s fun having a red Batmobile. I know it’s silly and whimsical and all that — but then so are comics and TV shows about comics and movies about comics. Especially when all those things add up to the wonderful, whimsical silliness that’s Batman ’66. This sweet little ride was a Funko San Diego Comic-Con exclusive — part of the company’s line of 3.75-inch Batman ’66 action figures — and it comes with an equally goofy, green, white and sky-blue Batman figure. As I wrote here, the whole package — complete with a technicolor window box — is a riff on the Japanese tin toys of the ’60s and ’70s, a bizarre and endearing subset of Batman collectibles. I have an original blue Batmobile myself and am rooting for Funko to produce a blue variant for New York Comic Con. The company is known for such things (click here for its Dorbz version). Taking a step back, though, let’s consider the red Batmobile. It’s not that far-fetched when you think about it. I mean, if there’d been a Season 4, can’t you just picture Batman giving one to Robin for his 18th birthday? He got his driver’s license in Season 3, after all. Plus, if Batman could end up with a pink cowl, what’s to say he wouldn’t end up dressed like this, thanks to the mirthful mayhem of the Joker? Anyway, if you’re keeping Batscore at home, that’s three Batmen we’ve gotten so far from Funko. Holy doppelgangers! OK, I can’t ignore the downside: The price. It was for sale at SDCC for $50. That means instant mark-up on the secondary market. As I write this, the cheapest one on eBay is about $65, including shipping. So, if you’re into this, you’ll have to be one cagey bird to score it at a more affordable price. Now, if you’re wondering what Funko may have up its sleeve come Wave 2, click here. In the meantime, dig the rest of these pix — and check out what Funko senior designer Reis O’Brien had to reveal about the red Batmobile by clicking here. — Check out...

The hidden hand of Batman’s modern masters. There are four great multipart stories that serve as the underpinnings of today’s Batman: Three of them, in chronological order, are Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ first Ra’s al Ghul saga; Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns; and Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One. The fourth is Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’ late ’70s Detective Comics run that culminated in The Laughing Fish. Throw in the seminal one-parter The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge by O’Neil and Adams in Batman #251 and you’ve got yourself one helluva Bat-library. Bruce Timm and the crew at Batman: The Animated Series, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall, understood that and they went to those wells repeatedly for story ideas. One of those standout episodes was The Laughing Fish, written by Paul Dini and directed by Timm himself. It adapted Englehart and Rogers’ classic and wove it into the climax from Batman #251. It’s one of the Animated Series’ high points, which is saying something when you’re talking about a show that completely remade the comic-book cartoon landscape. Diamond Select has capitalized on the popularity of the episode with a PVC statue that offers callbacks not just to Timm and Dini’s episode, but to the work of O’Neil, Adams, Englehart and Rogers. The 9-inch statue, which lists for $45, has the Joker momentarily triumphant, dangling a Joker fish (which you have to place in his hand when you set it up) with a leer that taunts the viewer. The statue may have been designed by Barry Bradfield and sculpted by Sam Greenwell — who did an outstanding job — based on Timm’s design, but this is Englehart and Rogers all the way. But this is not just a Joker statue. Batman makes a cameo at his feet, trapped in the aquarium where a hungry shark awaits — a sequence right out of Adams and O’Neil’s Batman #251. So when I look at this statue, I don’t just see the brilliant work of Timm and Dini, I see O’Neil, Adams, Englehart and Rogers too — making this a fitting testament to the last 45 years or so of Batman...